''Aion'' is the fifth studio album by the Australian band

Dead Can Dance Dead Can Dance are an Australian music duo first established in Melbourne. Currently composed of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry, the group formed in 1981. They relocated to London the following year. Australian music historian Ian McFarlane des ...

, released on 11 June 1990 by 4AD. The first album

Lisa Gerrard Lisa Germaine Gerrard (; born 12 April 1961) is an Australian musician, singer and composer who rose to prominence as part of the music group Dead Can Dance with music partner Brendan Perry. She is known for her unique singing style technique ( ...

and

Brendan Perry Brendan Michael Perry (born 30 June 1959) is a British singer and multi-instrumentalist best known for his work as half of the duo Dead Can Dance with Lisa Gerrard. Early life Perry was born in Whitechapel, London, England, UK, in 1959 to a mot ...

wrote after the end of their romantic partnership, it was recorded at Perry's new estate, Quivvy Church in Ireland, with additional recording on "The Arrival and the Reunion" and "The End of Words" taking place at

Woodbine Street Recording Studios Woodbine Street Recording Studios is a recording studio located in the town of Leamington Spa, England. There are two recording rooms, the first being the main 31 square metre one. The second is a 13.6 square metre 'live' room which is wood pane ...

Leamington Spa Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or simply Leamington (), is a spa town and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. Originally a small village called Leamington Priors, it grew into a spa town in the 18th century following ...

. On this album, Dead Can Dance explored

early music Early music generally comprises Medieval music (500–1400) and Renaissance music (1400–1600), but can also include Baroque music (1600–1750). Originating in Europe, early music is a broad musical era for the beginning of Western classical m ...

to a greater degree, including

medieval music Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries. It is the first and longest major era of Western classical music and followed by the Renaissance ...

and

Renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the Tr ...

, as Perry noted, "synonymous with the Bosch period"; this included pieces like the 14th-century Italian dance instrumental ("

Saltarello The ''saltarello'' is a musical dance originally from Italy. The first mention of it is in Add MS 29987, a late-fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century manuscript of Tuscan origin, now in the British Library. It was usually played in a fast tr ...

") and 16th-century Catalan ballad ("

The Song of the Sibyl The Song of the Sibyl ( ca, El Cant de la Sibil·la ) is a liturgical drama and a Gregorian chant, the lyrics of which comprise a prophecy describing the Apocalypse, which has been performed in churches on Majorca ( Balearic Islands, Spain) an ...

"), lyrics from 17th-century Spanish baroque poet

Luis de Góngora Luis de Góngora y Argote (born Luis de Argote y Góngora; ; 11 July 1561 – 24 May 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and a Catholic priest. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered the most prominent ...

("Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Book"), and instrumentation such as

hurdy-gurdy The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a vio ...

and

viol The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitc ...

s. The male soprano David Navarro Sust contributed vocals to tracks 1 and 7. The album cover shows a detail from the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

painter

Hieronymus Bosch Hieronymus Bosch (, ; born Jheronimus van Aken ; – 9 August 1516) was a Dutch/Netherlandish painter from Brabant. He is one of the most notable representatives of the Early Netherlandish painting school. His work, generally oil on oa ...

triptych A triptych ( ; from the Greek language, Greek adjective ''τρίπτυχον'' "''triptukhon''" ("three-fold"), from ''tri'', i.e., "three" and ''ptysso'', i.e., "to fold" or ''ptyx'', i.e., "fold") is a work of art (usually a panel painting) t ...

The Garden of Earthly Delights ''The Garden of Earthly Delights'' is the modern title given to a triptych oil painting on oak panel painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch, between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was between 40 and 60 years old. It has bee ...

'' (specifically, its central "Earth" panel).

Track listing

Personnel

Personnel adapted from ''Aion'' liner notes. ;Dead Can Dance * Lisa Gerrard – vocals, instrumentation, production * Brendan Perry – vocals, instrumentation, production, design ;Additional personnel * David Navarro Sust – vocals (tracks 1 and 7) * John Bonnar – keyboards (track 5), co-arrangements (tracks 2 and 5) * Robert Perry – bagpipes (tracks 2 and 6) * Andrew Robinson – bass viol (track 10) * Anne Robinson – bass viol (track 10) * Honor Carmody – tenor viol (track 10) * Lucy Robinson – tenor viol (track 10) *

– words (track 5)

References

External links

* * {{Authority control 1990 albums Dead Can Dance albums 4AD albums